Zimbabwe: Unforeseen opportunities for urban farmers
It is, however, critical for the urban farmers to always respect laws of the environment and desist from doing streambank cultivation, which ends up polluting and silting water bodies around towns, some of which keep drinking water for the people.
By Obert Chifamba
The Herald
Mar 16, 2021
Excerpt:
The Environmental Management Agency (EMA) did well to come into the fray and help with certification of some fields as either safe or unsafe for urban agriculture to safeguard the environment and water sources from pollution and siltation caused by farming chemicals and activities respectively.
What is exciting is the fact that most of the farmers now have very good looking crops, especially maize at various stages of growth with most angling towards ripening.
Such a development means that urbanites have this season taken care of most of their food security worries that they used to burden the rural farmers with.
Many are most likely to produce enough to feed families and even sell the surplus.
Already, their success story has started affecting communal farmers that come from areas such as Domboshava, Murehwa, Mutoko and Seke, as they are also churning produce into the same markets that communal farmers hunt in.
